Twitter has users. Mainstream (Silicon Valley) tech and drug dealers are the only two groups to use that term to describe people. And they're both obsessed with manufacturing addiction and exploiting those people. Calling people users is a form of othering.

Let's do better.

Mastodon doesn't have users. Mastodon has people. Call them members if you must. But not users.

@aral @Gargon no, you're fundamentally misrepresenting the nature of this technology as a product intended for use. this not only tacitly validates the stigmatization of addicts, it displaces all blame of harm that any consumer technology does onto this nameless (and hence blameless) elite, as though what SV companies do is somehow different than what tech companies do in NY or anywhere else.